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I was doing this for GS and was about to post it on Mt Silver when I realized nobody cares about that forum anymore, plus people might want to discuss this idea for DP and ADV as well. I haven't played the game DP itself for longer than 30 minutes though, so I wouldn't exactly know what is good and what isn't. So I'm leaving it up to you. Again, just for kicks, nothing serious.

I'm playing Gold right now for kicks, and got a random ridiculous idea. You'll usually be using a team from somewhere between 1 and 6 Pokemon, collected throughout the game. The Pokemon you can find early on will be, along with your starter, the easiest to use, because they get to train for longer. You'll never have to do something like switching in your starter, then switching it out again for a stronger Pokemon to train it, because it will always be able to hold its own. Something like Dratini may have better end results than, say, Chikorita, but at least Chikorita wasn't unavailable until you are about to challenge the 8th gym. And Chikorita comes at L5 when wild Pokemon are between L2 and L4 and trainers won't have much higher, while Dratini comes at 10-15 when opponents have in the late 30s already.

So, assuming you want to get through Gold/Silver without (too much) babying and endless training, what would be the best Pokemon? Take into account the level at which you catch them compared to the levels of your party and those of the opponents, the neary possible training locations, how easy it is for them to get up to par (less time needed = good) and how good the moves are they get in early levels to kill things with, if they have some kind of STAB, if they have access to cool resources like earlygame TMs you won't be needing much, whether they can and can afford to use HMs for you, etc. You'll find that base stats won't matter as much in-game as they do in competitive battling.

Your starter will obviously be your best Pokemon if you give your Pokemon equal attention. I put Cyndaquil at the top because it evolves into first stage very quickly, has the best position against gym leaders overall and it gets Flame Wheel. Totodile is still awesome against most gyms and also gets Surf long before Cyndaquil learns Flamethrower (and Chikorita's STAB always kind of sucks).

Rattata gets Hyper Fang (quite possibly one of the best earlygame moves) at a quick level and evolves at L20. With TM28 Dig from the National Park, he can solo all of the Ghost gym. Spearow can be caught very early and gets through Bugs really quickly. Pidgey is obviously worse than Spearow but comes even earlier (though Peck > Tackle!). Hoothoot is a nighttime worse version of Pidgey as far as I'm concerned.

Sudowoodo comes at a very decent level and you're guaranteed to encounter him. His endgame stats are obviously not very awesome, but at least he doesn't require much extra training at all.

Zubat can be caught in Dark Cave which is decently quick. Leech Life obviously blows but he's good enough to beat Bellsprouts at least, and gets Bite soon enough, and he's the #1 candidate to get haircuts and such on whenever possible, so he can kill things as a Crobat.

The legendary birds are good when you get them and will remain so, always. With the right TMs there's no stopping them, the only gay thing about them is that you need to complete a massive sidequest for them and they grow kind of slowly.

Paras is obviously not the best Pokemon out there type-wise, but he is an awesome HM whore and joins early enough.

Red Gyarados comes at a massive L30 and can be used off the bat without failing you. Also provides you with a lot of HM options as a filler without getting OHKOed by everything.

Geodude comes as early as Spearow, but getting OHKOed by anything with Water Gun or Vine Whip fails, and if you don't have anyone to trade with it can only evolve once. Magikarp is a PAIN to train, but you only have to do it for 15 levels before you have a pack of awesome in your team.

Caterpie and Weedle I'm not sure about. They obviously suck, but then they evolve to their final stages as early as L10, and Butterfree in particular owns stuff with Sleep Powder. These two to OU would be cool. The last two Bugs are just early joiners without too much going for them, but perhaps they are as good as Hoothoot.

Abra is hard to find and catch, but with the elemental punch TMs from the game corner he's really awesome. We all know that once Kadabra rolls around and learns Confusion and then Psybeam, it's over. Decimates Morty as well. Drowzee is easier to catch, but less powerful. Awesome against Bruno and Koga in the E4 for obvious reasons.

Wooper has that awesome typing going for him and is available pretty quickly. Mareep evolves twice, neither very late, and can learn Thunderpunch in Goldenrod (or later naturally), and also Fire Punch.

Bellsprout can be caught early and actually has STAB, though it's NVE on about everything around its catching situation (Bellsprouts in the tower, Falkner's Flying gym, random Bug trainers, Nidoran trainers), but it does okay on the fishing spot and in the Union Cave. Not being able to evolve to Victreebel until you get a Leaf Stone from Bill is argh though.

Onix can be traded in for a Bellsprout in Violet City and grows quite fast (go Rocky!). Same issues as Geodude - can get OHKOed, and can't evolve without a link cable. Its ending stats also blow...

Machop can be traded in for Drowzee in Goldenrod, and it probably doesn't hurt to use him in the Normal gym that comes up. No evolution to Machamp without Link Cable though.

Just a few Pokemon from the top of my head whose availability point downright sucks, either from not being able to be caught until very late or from being unavailable without a Link Cable and a RBY game.

Suicune, Raikou and Entei likely won't be encountered when you're ready for them, you need to do an Ecruteak sidequest for them and their movepools are...not that awesome.

Butterfree and Beedrill would be OU until about the end of Gym 4. You'll find most people use one, but get rid of it in exchange for the Red Gyarados or Sudowoodo because they start getting too weak.

I don't think Paras should be OU, because he evolves pretty late. Not to mention L.24 is incredibly late in GSC (I find I'm still using Paras as far as Chuck sometimes, and he's abysmal when you're preparing for things like Steelix and Gengar). Parasect also has terrible stats. They're not much higher than Butterfree's and Beedrill's if you look.

I think Geodude has been the most useful Pokemon in-game, ever. He's accessible very early in every game, and about 75% of Pokemon can't do anything notable to him. It's a great pity he can't evolve to Golem without trading though. Even so, I don't find using Graveller against the GSC E4 a problem. I once beat them with a team of L.33-35. I still had a Bayleef and a Pidgeotto. They make Graveller look excellent.

Well, this is certainly better than "Discussion that just regurgitates the analysis" and "Pokemon + Choice/Life Orb = ZOMG!" threads, at least.

As far as Gold/Silver goes, I'd rank Heracross in BL as he's available as soon as you get Headbutt, if I remember right. Maybe lower because his ingame movepool is kinda crappy.

For D/P, you can't not mention Starly and Shinx as two early, badasses that you can basically carry throughout the entire game with no problems. Double-Intimidating especially can make some Pokemon trival, combined with Revive spamming. Easy OU.

As far as the starters go, I'd say Chimchar = Turtwig > Piplup. Piplup traditionlly has an advantage over the first gym, but...both the monkey and the turtle also have ways of abusing that particular gym, so it's a pretty weak advantage in his favor.

Machop is more than decent with No Guard, espcially when you have to deal with Fog.

Other honorable mentions would include Ponyta as token Fire type if you don't take the monkey, and Budew for being early, and getting an early evolution to Roselia if you're dedicated.

Riolu and Happini take the cake for being garbage considering when you get them, and how tough it can be to make them useful.

For DP, Starly replaced my starter as best Pokemon ever. It can basically go through everything past the first gym by itself. With the lack of Stealth Rock, Vespiquen can be a really powerful tank, taking hits from very high leveled opponents fairly well. Drifblim can be useful as well, with the option to pass Stockpiles. Not sure how much babying is required for Budew, but Leech Seed/Powders are very helpful. I also had high success with Shellos, with Stockpile/Recover, and Bronzor with Hypnosis/Confuse Ray/Gyro Ball. However, I haven't played through it in a while and don't remember the levels most of those come at compared to your opponents.

Dude no way, Bellsprout in GSC is has to be super OU early game. After you catch it at that level, in the union cave, being able to OHKO Lv 11-14 Onixes with your level 6 Bellsprout gains it like 2 levels at a time. After your own Bellsprout get to like level 12, those Onixes are giving you like 1 level a kill and the Geodudes/Sandshrews give you like 2/3rds the needed experience for a level. If you rack up in that cave an extra 5 minutes, you can come out to the bug gym already around level 20. =[

I'm not sure if I like the idea or if it seems trivial, maybe for speed runs this is helpful, but I'm not sure we even need those anymore with Wifi trading. For anything Pre-D/P sure why not, but really who plays those games anymore or even needs to?

I know people who did speed runs in ADV for the JAA to have a new game name or to collect things, so there is a market for this information.

Super Moderator

Well, this is certainly better than "Discussion that just regurgitates the analysis" and "Pokemon + Choice/Life Orb = ZOMG!" threads, at least.

As far as Gold/Silver goes, I'd rank Heracross in BL as he's available as soon as you get Headbutt, if I remember right. Maybe lower because his ingame movepool is kinda crappy.

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Thank you, thank you. If I recall correctly Heracross is only in the trees to the east of Ecruteak, which is after 3-4 gyms already, and Headbutting is also kinda lame because sometimes you encounter nothing and you'll often find the wrong Pokemon...it's somewhere between trying to catch an Abra and trying to find a somewhat common, random Pokemon in the grass. He also won't get Megahorn until way into Kanto and doesn't really have a good Fighting move...

For D/P...

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If you say so.

Butterfree and Beedrill would be OU until about the end of Gym 4. You'll find most people use one, but get rid of it in exchange for the Red Gyarados or Sudowoodo because they start getting too weak.

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If I pump EXP into these two I'll use them for my endgame team, and if I want Red Gyarados/Sudowoodo I'll just add them I think. Butterfree also has Flash and Sleep Powder.

OU during the first gyms - somewhat sucky to level up - worse performance as the game goes on = BL imo, even Butterfree's cool moves won't really make up for it.

I don't think Paras should be OU, because he evolves pretty late. Not to mention L.24 is incredibly late in GSC (I find I'm still using Paras as far as Chuck sometimes, and he's abysmal when you're preparing for things like Steelix and Gengar). Parasect also has terrible stats. They're not much higher than Butterfree's and Beedrill's if you look.

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Paras is by far one of your best options for Cut though, also because he gets to use Flash and Rock Smash. And he's able to Spore against the later gyms, so his stats there are moot as it's practically a 100% safe OHKO as long as you can knock things out after hurting. Slash as an attacking move is okay but not very good though.

I think Geodude has been the most useful Pokemon in-game, ever. He's accessible very early in every game, and about 75% of Pokemon can't do anything notable to him. It's a great pity he can't evolve to Golem without trading though. Even so, I don't find using Graveller against the GSC E4 a problem. I once beat them with a team of L.33-35. I still had a Bayleef and a Pidgeotto. They make Graveller look excellent.

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I think 75% is a pretty big exeggeration. I like the guy but he's either very useful or useless. Against the Elite Four, he's kind of weak to everyone except some of Koga's Pokemon.

Gastly should also be on that list somewhere I reckon.

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Yes, but I'm not sure where to place him. I'm using him at the moment - Bellsprouts in the tower cannot do squat to him, though Lick is obviously an AWFUL attacking move and he doesn't get anything better until Shadow Ball (which other Pokemon might want as well) and Night Shade. Very very early sleep is nice (though accuracy is lacking)...I'd praise his immunities more if half of the enemies didn't carry random Pursuit/Bite/Foresight, but sometimes it does come handy. And then he's in the "can't evolve without Link Cable but is good enough without" boat with Kadabra, Graveler and Machoke.

I think he's BL overall. He's one of the only few Pokemon who is good against Red's Snorlax without insane powerleveling...the only other ones are like Misdreavus (who you catch in that very cave...talk about the worst catch situation) and Primeape and Machoke.

This is a great idea though. :) I applaud ye.

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Thank you thank you.

fat MoP said:

bellsprout!!!

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I don't like leveling up in caves though, I'd rather just plunge right through. He's good obviously, just...Razor Leaf and Acid as only STAB, no evolution to Victreebel until halfway in Kanto, ranges from not notably useful to super suck in the gyms, 10PP main attacking move...

I'm not sure if I like the idea or if it seems trivial, maybe for speed runs this is helpful, but I'm not sure we even need those anymore with Wifi trading. For anything Pre-D/P sure why not, but really who plays those games anymore or even needs to?

I know people who did speed runs in ADV for the JAA to have a new game name or to collect things, so there is a market for this information.

To sum it up: why not?

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Why not indeed. It's more entertaining than arguing about the same things (Blissey, competitive tiers, etc) all over again.

In D/P (because that's basically the only generation I remember), I'd rank Chimchar as the most effective Pokemon, as it is very offensive and fast; it also gets a pretty nice movepool when evolved to Infernape, with Flamethrower, Flare Blitz, Close Combat, Calm Mind, and some TMs, the most notable of which are Grass Knot and Swords Dance (cheap at the Game Corner). Piplup and Turtwig are also effective, but don't carry enough Speed. Starly evolves at nearly the same rate as the starters and learns Brave Bird and Close Combat, both of which are really cool, and to top it off Staraptor has awesome Attack, Speed, and Intimidate. Azelf and Palkia/Dialga are massively powerful if you don't mind re-EVing them afterwards.

Super Moderator

I "wouldn't mind EVing them afterwards" because I'm assuming all you want to do is beat the game. Which I define as:
RBY: 8 badges + Elite Four (+ Mewtwo)
GSC: 16 badges + Elite Four + Red (and in Crystal, that includes the Suicune quest)
ADV: 8 badges + Elite Four (Battle Tower/Frontier are competitive and not needed to complete the story, so to speak)

I made an attempt for RB, so feel free to debate it or whatever. If needed I can explain the reasoning behind some. Yellow is slightly different because of the Pokemon available (mostly the starters being replaced by Pikachu and being available later as underleveled, and things like Ekans not existing, some move and trainer changes, Gym Leaders are harder, etc).

Starters are obvious. Though I'm not putting Pokemon in order for power usually, I think Bulbasaur is the best because of gym advantages (it beats the other two for the first three gyms), and midgame Razor Leaf gives it the win. Squirtle's gym and typing advantage over Charmander is better than Charmeleon getting Slash imo.

Spearow, Pidgey and Rattata shouldn't need much explanation. Ekans is only in Red but has Wrap and later on Glare. Pikachu can be evolved in Celadon and is basically the only true Electric. Sandshrew gets Slash at freakin' level 17 and evolves at level 22, and stops Lt Surge cold.

The Nido's evolve as early as L16 and are in the grass patch near your second Gary battle (one more common in Red than in Blue and vice versa, don't remember exactly, but who cares). Their level-up moves suck, but you can just evolve them to Nidoking/Nidoqueen somewhere at Mt Moon and have your fun with them (though you may want to wait until after Misty so they're not Water weak). They can take the Dig TM (which is 100 base power in RBY) to rape everything including Surge, and then you have the Thunderbolt TM ready for them (the only other good Pokemon that wants it is Pikachu, perhaps Zapdos, Snorlax or Meowth.

Oddish gets powder attacks, an okay basic Absorb and gets to drain Misty and Surge. And obviously Sleep Powder, and final evolution stage in Celadon. Diglett and Dugtrio are megafast, own Lt. Surge as well as the gazillion of Engineers to the east of Diglett cave and don't come at a too low level, they're able to Cut and Dig (without TM!). Dugtrio is just awesome earlygame.

Meowth gets Bite at L12, which is Normal in RBY and flinches, so that's cool. You don't exactly have a money shortage but Pay Day at L17 is nice. Kind of a late evolution at L28 and Slash only comes at L44 though...

Bellsprout is like Oddish except Vine Whip over Absorb and with Razor Leaf later. Awesome.

Geodude doesn't evolve to Golem without a link cable, but Lt Surge literally cannot do ANYTHING and obviously Explosion + Revive is just incredible.

You're always going to encounter Snorlax (twice, in fact) and he will always be about your team's level if not higher. I doubt I'll need to explain this one - it's like GSC Sudowoodo except he doesn't dwindle.

The birds are like Snorlax: come good, stay good. Moltres has way suckier moves (at L51, Zapdos has Thundershock/Drill Peck/Thunder, Articuno has Ice Beam/Blizzard/Peck and Moltres has Fire Spin/Peck/Leer) but Fire Spin has that awesome trapping effect so he's here nonetheless.

Note: Exeggcute is now BL because you don't have to go out of your way much to make him good. If you go to Safari Zone first before saving Saffron and doing the gyms (it does mean you get Surf and Strength sooner for in-battle use), then you can catch him on your way easily. Then you can teach him TM29 (Psychic) in Saffron and rape the Fighting gym as well as all these Rockets with Zubat/Golbat/Koffing/Weezing/Magnemite with it with little to no sweat, and evolve him whenever you're ready with a Leaf Stone from Celadon.

Yes, who'd ever thought Tauros and Chansey would end up in UU for a RB tier list?

Excluded: Mew is here because he's unavailable (I'm assuming no glitch abuse whatsoever, or you could just get everyone to L90 with infinite Rare Candies). Mewtwo is here because after you get him the game is basically over, so he can't really do much except pound the Elite Four and wild Pokemon over and over again.

VGC Leader

mekkah, did you forget about Poliwag? he can be obtained very early in game in cyrstal. Were is magnemite also (although there is very little reason to even use him), and lapras? (obtainable as soon as you can use TM surf when it's friday, comes at level 20 too)

I'd put in an extra good word for Articuno in RBY because w/o him, Lance can be a real bitch. >.<

Zapdos can be annoying since it really takes you out of your way to get him. Since you'll really be wanting to bring Zappy/Raichu/Jolteon with you to beat down Lorilei, it might not be a waste of time (though of those 3 Zappy is the only one with an ice weak).

Actually, considering you can surf down from Pallet, Articuno is quite troublesome to go after too (though you do get seel in there, which can be used against lance or traded for Ponyta). If I remember correctly, you can get Slowbro in there at a really good level too (38?), and with Amnesia (x2 Sp.ATK + Sp.DEF = lol) and 2 useful STABs it can be a lot of fun . . .

Overall Moltres takes you the least out of the way but is the most useless of the 3 against the E4. Fire Spin = lol, time to use the F Blast tm . . .

Super Moderator

mekkah, did you forget about Poliwag? he can be obtained very early in game in cyrstal. Were is magnemite also (although there is very little reason to even use him), and lapras? (obtainable as soon as you can use TM surf when it's friday, comes at level 20 too)

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I'm not ready for Yellow/Crystal yet, and Poliwag is pretty awful in Gold/Silver iirc. I only thought up a few examples for G/S, that one is by far not done yet. L20 Lapras at the point of Ecruteak is nice, but having to play on Friday is meh.

I'd put in an extra good word for Articuno in RBY because w/o him, Lance can be a real bitch. >.<

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Agreed, though Squirtle starters can skip that because Blastoise can Ice Beam/Blizzard.

Zapdos can be annoying since it really takes you out of your way to get him. Since you'll really be wanting to bring Zappy/Raichu/Jolteon with you to beat down Lorilei, it might not be a waste of time (though of those 3 Zappy is the only one with an ice weak).

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Yeah, but I think that's compensated by the fact that Zapdos is super low maintenance otherwise: Thunder + Drill Peck + about overleveled = great. Not worth going to BL for imo.

Actually, considering you can surf down from Pallet, Articuno is quite troublesome to go after too (though you do get seel in there, which can be used against lance or traded for Ponyta). If I remember correctly, you can get Slowbro in there at a really good level too (38?), and with Amnesia (x2 Sp.ATK + Sp.DEF = lol) and 2 useful STABs it can be a lot of fun . . .

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Seel is kinda meh considering for how long you can really use him, but I might look into the fella later...but if you're going to these islands you may as well get Articuno imo. Though I don't like that sidequest at all, again, it's not enough to make them BL I think.

While I love your Slowbro idea, Amnesia doesn't come before L44 (40 for Slowpoke), but at least he can Surf. He learns Psychic at 55 (Slowpoke at 48), so it's wasting TM29 when others could use it vs being able to use it for longer.

Overall Moltres takes you the least out of the way but is the most useless of the 3 against the E4. Fire Spin = lol, time to use the F Blast tm . . .

Super Moderator

Both of these get awful level-up moves until the late thirtees. Eevee also gets awful level-up moves, its best is like...Bite. They need TMs to become remotely good and even then they aren't anything special compared to others. Vaporeon is somewhat good because of Surf and the possibility of the Ice Beam TM, but not very noteworthy since every single Water can do so.

Jolteon is notable imo just because he's fast with thunder/bolt tm, he's pretty much set. It can be a bitch to hunt down pikachu in Viridian Forest if I recall correctly. Raichu however is probably more effective than Jolteon in the long run against the majority of Gyms/stuff (Mega Punch/Body Slam go surprisingly far). In game, the difference between Raichu & Jolteon's speed is probably trivial-- nothing notable's outrunning you anyway.

Pikachu also gets points for coming early and being at a higher level when you face misty than oddish/belsprout would be so it's great for Squirty/Charmander users. Actually, Ivysaur users too . . .

When you're staring down a Fully Evolved OU Special Sweeper in Misty's Starmie with STAB'd BubbleBeam with no attacks on your team with BP over 40 . . . you need all the help you can get . . . lol

in short:
Pikachu = OU
Jolteon = BL

. . . lol

*note: IMO, Misty is the most broken Gym leader. I mean 100 base SP.ATK and 115 SPEED in the second gym with 60BM STAB against which there are no immunities??? WTF were they thinking?? My trick though was to go catch oddish/belsprout, then spend all my $$ on items and deposit all my other pokes before going to Cerulean Gym. I'd fight Misty again and again, getting experience from beating staryu until Bel/oddish finally was able to beat her. This way you easily add a new member on your team (since Oddish/bel will be the same level/higher by the time it manages to beat Misty).

Anyway, I would change the legendary birds from the RB tier list due to the overal annoyance in catching the birds, especially Articuno. Moltres is rather lame against the E4 as well, really offering nothing except an easy kill on Exeggcutor and possibly Jynx. Compared to something like Starmie ,that with Surf/Ice Beam/Thunderbolt/Psychic hits everything except Lorelei's Jynx and Rival's Alakazam for super effective damage. Those TM's are fairly easy to obtain and for Staryu, just fish. And you can evolve it immediately after catching with the easy to obtain water stone.

On a side note, Misty is pretty broken, especially in FR/LG with that cursed Water Pulse and its confuse hax. yet another reason to go for Bulbasaur. Sabrina was challenging too though, simply because you could not hit her SE and there were very few Psychic resists available.

Well for a RBY speedrun, the only really needed pokes were of course Blastoise and Zapdos. They make an excellent pair for dealing with the later gyms/entire Elite 4. Zapdos takes out Lorelei, Blastoise the Onixs that Bruno has, Zapdos has drill peck for the fighters. Agatha's pokemon get destroyed by Dig from Blastoise, except Golbat who gets a Thunder to the face from Zapdos. Lance gets beat by them as well, and then Gary's not bad at all.

And in RB I'm not positive, but I think Golem/Alakazam/Gengar/Machamp simply evolved by leveling and did not require trading and that the new method of evolution was not introduced until Yellow.

Nope, still required you to trade.

On a side note, Misty is pretty broken, especially in FR/LG with that cursed Water Pulse and its confuse hax. yet another reason to go for Bulbasaur. Sabrina was challenging too though, simply because you could not hit her SE and there were very few Psychic resists available.

You can get Tauros/Miltank (and Stantler) right after Sudowoodo and they're level 13-15 and have superior stats to damn near everything.

Cyndaquil is a massive pain to train from what I recall, but once Typh gets Flamethrower, game over foes!

Bellsprout is awful in GSC. Even if you catch one at sprout tower it sucks unless you chose Cyndaquil. Yeah, you can level up in Union Cave... and then get your hide varnished by Bugsy, Whitney, Morty, Jasmine, Pryce, and Clair. Bellsprout is like a worse Chikorita whose only saving grace is Sleep Powder.

Zubat is a mixed case. On the one hand it needs a LOT of babying. On the other hand, if you don't let it faint too much and take it to the hairstylist you'll have a Crobat by Level 40 that can hit anything with Confuse Ray and then Wing Attack it to death.

Remoraid was tough to catch and you had to wait a while if you wanted a swarm, but you could always powerlevel to 44 to get Ice Beam and then rape everything with Octy.

I have to agree that the birds are more trouble than they're worth, except Zapdos who is relatively easy to get and has two awesome STAB moves.

Kadabra is awesome just because it destroys the legions of Ghastly's you encounter in the tower, Sabrina's gym trainers and most team rockets with their poison types with ease. Getting Abra's isn't so easy though which is why I imagine it's BL. That is where Butterfree comes in. If only to use it to catch those speedy, teleporting Abra's above Cerulean City.

Speaking of tough battles, there is this trainer with a high level Butterfree just above Vermillion City that is really hard to take down.

*note: IMO, Misty is the most broken Gym leader. I mean 100 base SP.ATK and 115 SPEED in the second gym with 60BM STAB against which there are no immunities??? WTF were they thinking?? My trick though was to go catch oddish/belsprout, then spend all my $$ on items and deposit all my other pokes before going to Cerulean Gym. I'd fight Misty again and again, getting experience from beating staryu until Bel/oddish finally was able to beat her. This way you easily add a new member on your team (since Oddish/bel will be the same level/higher by the time it manages to beat Misty).

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Misty was fun in my mono-fire RB Game (aka Solo Charmander line until Celeadon City basically). Oh how I loved Auto-CH Slash on Charmeloen. Basically you just Slashed it and prayed Starmie would use Harden or Water Gun instead of Bubblebeam and then finish it with another Slash. Gogo overleveling!

Interesting idea, I've always taken some interest in defining tiers for regular RPG games (mainly Fire Emblem), and I'd say that it's definitely harder since you have to take so many different factors into consideration. I'd like to contribute but I only remember a little about RBY so I can't contribute a whole lot.

^Yeah, but imo walls aren't great when it comes to speed runs. You'll get through the game much faster with 6 sweepers, and seeing as the enemy doesn't switch, and you get to switch after killing their pokes, not much point in carrying a wall.

Okay, Kip is a beast. He evolves early, and can take down the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Gyms easily. Mud Shot pwns.
Treecko is okay, but he's stuck with shitty Absorb for STAB until 29 for Leaf Blade.
Torchic is beastly. He gets his evo quickly and fighting moves with it, which are always a plus.
Shroomish evolves decently early. Breloom's Mach Punch will save your ass a lot, and Shroomy learns Mega Drain, which is more than Treecko can do.
Ralts is great! You can't attack with him until ~LV6, when he learns Confusion, but then you will tear shit up. It learns Calm Mind and Psychic at early levels, too. Calm Mind isn't as useful ingame, though.
Aron is available reasonably early. He can take hits like a champ, too, which helps in the Flying Gym and Normal Gym. He learns an assload of TMs too.
Tentacool may be an odd choice, but remember the 'cools come in varied levels. By the time you surf, you should be ~LV30. Catch one at LV30 and teach it surf, and you're set. (Previously you should have been using a HM Slave for Surf.)
Ziggy and Marill are easily obtainable HM Slaves. Nincada gets a mention for Cut, Dig, and Flash. Plus if you evolve him and get a Shedinja, you can use it to wall shit in battles while you revive/potion your pokemon.
Taillow is fast as hell and strong enough later on. It's mainly for Fly, though.
Kyogre and Groundon are amazing, nothing more, nothing less. Thier insane power will plow you through the rest of the game when you get em.